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Lot Essay
Dancers Under the Starry Sky belongs to an important series of works of the same title created by Ernst in 1951. Many of the paintings, drawings, pastels and collages that originally constituted this enigmatic series of dancing figures are now unfortunately lost, making this a rare surviving example from this fascinating period in the artist's life.
Ernst executed these works when he was living in Sedona, Arizona and they were almost certainly inspired by the Native American dances and ceremonies that he witnessed there. It was in 1946 that Ernst and his new wife, the painter Dorothea Tanning, settled in Sedona. Its dramatic red sandstone formations captivated the couple, as did the area's Native American settlements and its many ancient sites and ruins. Ernst, like other members of the surrealist movement, had long been attracted to Native American art and culture and when he arrived in America in 1941 from war-torn Europe he amassed a large collection of Kachina figures--children's dolls representing spirits in Hopi and Zuni Indian ceremonial dances. Ernst had a profound respect for these so-called 'primitive' tribes where traditional customs continued to play a significant role. "For them/time exists/suspended," Ernst wrote in Dix mille peaux-rouges (Ten thousand red skins), a poetic homage to the Native American Indians that describes their lives as punctuated by ceremonies and ritualistic dances.
Ernst had managed to strike up a friendship with the Hopi Indians on a reservation and brought the English surrealist artist Roland Penrose and the photographer Lee Miller to visit it. There they witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a rain dance, with the participants holding snakes as they gyrated and danced (W. Spies, ed., Max Ernst, Life and Work, An Autobiographical Collage, London, 2006, p. 194). Dancers Under the Starry Sky very much evokes the sense of mystery and awe Ernst must have felt witnessing such a spectacle under a clear and star-studded desert night sky. It has a glinting, vitreous quality with spectral-like amoeboid-shaped forms--accentuated by flashes of jewel-bright reds, blues, greens and white highlights of impasto--emerging from, and dissolving into, a shimmering jade--and yellow-green background. The intertwined, twisting figures to the left are full of energy, perhaps tinged with a slight sense of threat or violence, occasioned by the strangeness of the event, and contrast with the stationary, totemic form to the right. As in other works from this series, and comparable to his painting Chemical Nuptials (Spies, no. 2594) of 1948, the figures are rendered in a faceted, schematized manner. Patrick Waldberg has remarked that "like that of the Hopi, Navaho, and Apache Indians who were his neighbors," Ernst's art is "neither realistic nor abstract, but emblematic" (quoted in E. Rubin, ed., "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art, Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984, p. 564). Dancers Under the Starry Sky is undoubtedly emblematic--emblematic, in particular, of Ernst's fascination with Native American ritual and culture. The manner in which he has painted it, moreover, emphasizes all the mystery and magic that he felt of witnessing these distinctly elemental and powerful events.
Ernst executed these works when he was living in Sedona, Arizona and they were almost certainly inspired by the Native American dances and ceremonies that he witnessed there. It was in 1946 that Ernst and his new wife, the painter Dorothea Tanning, settled in Sedona. Its dramatic red sandstone formations captivated the couple, as did the area's Native American settlements and its many ancient sites and ruins. Ernst, like other members of the surrealist movement, had long been attracted to Native American art and culture and when he arrived in America in 1941 from war-torn Europe he amassed a large collection of Kachina figures--children's dolls representing spirits in Hopi and Zuni Indian ceremonial dances. Ernst had a profound respect for these so-called 'primitive' tribes where traditional customs continued to play a significant role. "For them/time exists/suspended," Ernst wrote in Dix mille peaux-rouges (Ten thousand red skins), a poetic homage to the Native American Indians that describes their lives as punctuated by ceremonies and ritualistic dances.
Ernst had managed to strike up a friendship with the Hopi Indians on a reservation and brought the English surrealist artist Roland Penrose and the photographer Lee Miller to visit it. There they witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a rain dance, with the participants holding snakes as they gyrated and danced (W. Spies, ed., Max Ernst, Life and Work, An Autobiographical Collage, London, 2006, p. 194). Dancers Under the Starry Sky very much evokes the sense of mystery and awe Ernst must have felt witnessing such a spectacle under a clear and star-studded desert night sky. It has a glinting, vitreous quality with spectral-like amoeboid-shaped forms--accentuated by flashes of jewel-bright reds, blues, greens and white highlights of impasto--emerging from, and dissolving into, a shimmering jade--and yellow-green background. The intertwined, twisting figures to the left are full of energy, perhaps tinged with a slight sense of threat or violence, occasioned by the strangeness of the event, and contrast with the stationary, totemic form to the right. As in other works from this series, and comparable to his painting Chemical Nuptials (Spies, no. 2594) of 1948, the figures are rendered in a faceted, schematized manner. Patrick Waldberg has remarked that "like that of the Hopi, Navaho, and Apache Indians who were his neighbors," Ernst's art is "neither realistic nor abstract, but emblematic" (quoted in E. Rubin, ed., "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art, Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1984, p. 564). Dancers Under the Starry Sky is undoubtedly emblematic--emblematic, in particular, of Ernst's fascination with Native American ritual and culture. The manner in which he has painted it, moreover, emphasizes all the mystery and magic that he felt of witnessing these distinctly elemental and powerful events.